'Seed of Chaos' System

Captain Swallow's attacker was a creature known as a Mind Flayer, a kind of humanoid monster with an octopus-looking head and incredible psychic powers. This particular Mind Flayer, which was designated as A26, was but one of several scouts in service of the Great Mind. A scolding voice came through its Link to the Mind, berating A26 for failing to capture the prey alive. Empty meat was useless to the Flayer Colony. Since Mind Flayers fed on sentience and psychic energy, anything dead no longer qualified as food.

Obeying a mental command from the Mind, A26 collected the pretty weapon, which had an unusual psychic resonance that the Mind wished to investigate, and turned to leave the hominid's empty corpse behind. 

When the corpse groaned in agony, however, A26 turned around and noticed that the severed upper half of the slain hominid was gradually regrowing its severed lower half. The Mind Flayer blurbled, waving the tentacles on its face in confusion. Didn't slicing hominids in half result in death by blood loss? This was highly irregular. When the Mind enthusiastically amended A26's instructions, A26 readily complied, casting a sleep spell on the prey and dragging its limp body along while it slowly regrew its legs. 

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Back at the Colony, the Mind hovered in its cylindrical life-support tank, eager to examine the new discovery. A sword with psychic energy wasn't something you could expect to see every day. Would it be useful? Could it be eaten?

The Mind's physical form looked like an exposed brain, with four long, thin barbed tentacles sprouting from the brainstem and a few menacing, curved deep purple spikes growing down the center of its dorsal side. It had no eyes, but hundreds of thin, transparent hairs on its surface twitched in the tank's current. These tiny hairs made the Mind's brainlike body look almost fuzzy. Meanwhile, its barbed tentacles swished back and forth, twitching occasionally as the main body (the brain) bobbed up and down in the tank. Various tubes and wires connected the tank to a collection of machines around the room. Several green, blinking lights could be seen on many of them. 

Why was there a room full of sophisticated technology in a fantasy world? This question had occurred to the Mind, or rather, Kelly, many times over the last few months. She had barely survived a death game that had required her to design deadly paranormal events just to have a chance to live on. Right after that, she'd woken up flopping helplessly for air in front of a being that called himself the Demon King, been branded with a Soul Enslavement mark, and forced to develop a colony of Mind Flayers. 

Apparently, Mind Flayers were specialized forces that could effectively cripple pretty much any army, so long as it wasn't made entirely of troops resistant to psychic manipulation. If she were to comment on their magical and psychic abilities, she would rate them as being grade S. Their physical capabilities were quite pitiful, however, perhaps to balance out their ridiculous psychic power. She rated their overall physical aptitude as being grade F.

Until her Flayers acquired physically powerful beasts they could control to defend them, their actions would be focused on developing their Colony in secret. Their physical weakness, together with several other factors, made the current situation far from ideal. All in all, however, this Story was much more comfortable than the last. In some ways, it was even immensely satisfying. It almost felt like playing a kingdom-building, villain-themed video game. 

Perhaps it was because her role in this Story was not "human," but as a "monster," she felt no emotional attachments to the two-legged primates whatsoever. All they looked like now was livestock. In fact, if it weren't for the humans' delicious intelligence, she would have found their appearance disgusting. How was it that she could find the human body so gross, but enjoy her brainlike appearance and the octopus faces of her children so much? Was this Zorhellian's doing? As much as she hated him for what he'd done to her, she had to admire his insane magical prowess. Changing someone's subconscious preferences couldn't be easy.

As she turned her thoughts towards the new prey A26 brought in, she felt a twinge of disappointment. Safely tucked away in her tank as she was, she couldn't take part in the act of eating herself. She could only do so by proxy. Apparently her physical form was even more fragile than those of her children, the Mind Flayers; she vividly recalled the pain of suffocation on her first day in this Story. She had nearly died before spending even five minutes in this world. Luckily, the Demon King had known why she couldn't breathe, and promptly provided her with this life-support tank and a base of operations. As for how she obtained sustenance, the psychic link between herself and her Mind Flayer children enabled the transmitting of psychic energy; since she and they subsisted on sentience and psychic energy, Kelly could eat vicariously through them.

Having a Hive Mind was surprisingly useful.

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A few days ago

While most of the Mind Flayers had so little self-awareness and sense of identity that they seemed like carbon copies of one another, there was one Flayer that felt it was different from the rest. It was not satisfied with simply obeying the Mind's orders without question and sought to do the unthinkable: break away from the Hive Mind. 

This one's designation was G14. It had been assigned to be a Gardener; in other words, it grew mushrooms and other foods in order to feed human livestock. It didn't particularly mind being a Gardener. After all, a human needed sustenance in order to stay alive long enough to have all of their sentience and psychic energy sucked out. It was wasteful to allow them to die before giving their every last drop to the Colony. 

What bothered G14 was the fact that humans, mere livestock, could think and act for themselves, while the more powerful Mind Flayers could not. It felt that there was a logical incongruity to this. If the Mind Flayers were indeed superior, then why were their minds less free than the minds of those who existed only to serve as food? 

Eventually, G14 succeeded in breaking away from the Hive Mind, and…

The Mind did not take kindly to this.